I went out drinking on Friday and woke up with an unusually painful hangover on Saturday.

So I slept all day, read, and watched a movie I rented. I took a hot shower, drank herbal tea, ate a light dinner, and went to bed early greatly anticipating waking up the next morning to head to a yoga class.

I was therefore very surprised to wake up hungover again.

How could this happen? I was tired and aching. I didn’t go to yoga. Instead, I stayed home and took naps. What was wrong? Why was I being such a wussy? Friday night wasn’t THAT bad.

And then I woke up on Monday still hungover. This was really, really strange. Eery even.

As I checked my email Monday morning, I noticed all the people announcing they were staying home with a terrible cold.

And that’s when I realized that I wasn’t hungover – I simply had been fighting a cold and won.

Although I didn’t get sick, I got what I think of as “almost sick.” I was lethargic because my body was using all of its energy fighting the cold.

I hate feeling lethargic. It’s depressing. You want to nap, but doing so just makes you more tired. There is nothing refreshing about sleep in this state.

So I decided to kick the lethargy out of me by doing some hard, sweaty flow yoga. Although it was the last thing I felt like doing, I did, and voila – I immediately felt fantastic.

Just one hour transformed my body from tired into bursting with energy.

I’ve noticed in the past how good I feel after either a cold or hangover – they make feeling healthy so easy and wonderful to appreciate.

If you’re into yoga and have a tough time getting to classes, you might want to try renting them on Netflix.

Of course, you can buy DVD’s, but they’re expensive, and you don’t know if you’re going to like the teaching until after you’ve handed over your money.

I started renting yoga classes and have found that I do yoga more often, I spend less on it, and I can select exactly the duration I want to do. For instance, the typical class is 90 minutes. But there are DVD’s that will let you choose 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minute classes.

There are a lot of instructional DVD’s on Netflix as well. If you want to learn an instrument, language, or just about anything else, it’s there.

Damn, this sounds like an ad for Netflix. It’s not. You can also get these DVD’s at the library.